J. D. C. to Spend $5,000,000 in Western Europe, Poland and Yugoslavia

January 19, 1965

PARIS (Jan. 18)

The Joint Distribution Committee is earmarking about $5,000,000 for relief work during 1965 in Western Europe, Poland and Yugoslavia, despite an overall reduction in expenditures, M. Bryn, the JDC director of budget and finance, reported at a press conference here today. He said the overall JDC budget for 1965 would be $28,800,000.

He reported that the JDC would contribute nearly $2,500,000 for rehabilitation, welfare and operation of communal institutions in France and said that local Jewish communities will increasingly have to provide for their own needs. “With every year that passes, we shall more and more have to concentrate our efforts in hardship areas,” he declared.

In France, the JDC works with the Fonds Sociale Juif Unifie, the central Jewish welfare agency, which is receiving JDC assistance for the JDC-FSJU “pool” which runs general communal services and which will receive 3,000,000 francs (about $800,000). Last year, 55,000 persons, most of them heads of families, received JDC help in France. M. Bryn said that while local communities were increasingly ready to shoulder their own responsibilities, “more must be done in this direction.”